SZ: Because that’s what God does, just like the perverts.
TZ: God mixes God-self with the unjust stink of things.
After Abigail left and went back to New York and after my dad returned with his lady friend and after my West Coast mother who I talked to every day had been revealed as a little unreliable, I wandered the streets where we all used to live. I noticed the sidewalks were degraded. The roads had bulletsized cracks. I realized that the bagel stores were all run by Filipino Catholics. I refilled my prescriptions in New Age Jewish wellness digs.
I felt like a bite had been taken out of me.
So I nurtured TZ’s voice as a secret entity.
Books Cited
Franz Kafka, Letter to the Father (Schocken, 2015).
——. The Metamorphosis (W.W. Norton, 2014).
Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton University Press, 1973).
Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls (Panther Books, 1958).
——, Shvitti (First Gateways, 1988).